Posse Incitatus

The progressive pharisees of National Review

It’s pretty well established that much of the left substitutes politics for religion.  What they lack in faith they make up for in ideology, which is why someone who disagrees with them on an issue is not merely wrong but objectively evil.

A leftist who urges a policy change flirts with heresy.

All of this has been true for a long time.

What is not as well known is that a certain brand of conservative has likewise substituted religion for politics.  Just as leftists see policy preferences as a path of secular salvation, these conservatives see religious preferences as a path of policy guidance – and people who disagree are (as in the above example) not merely wrong but objectively evil.

Similarly, those on their own side who don’t share their beliefs are heretics to be chastised and burned, not reasoned with.

I was too busy last week to write about this, but National Review-sponsored Quisling Never Trumper David French (and his wife) have been on a roll lately, denouncing their nominal political allies and co-religionists for supporting Donald Trump instead of (wait for it) Mitt Romney, that paragon of defeatist virtue.

The increasingly indispensable American Greatness has an excellent summary and rejoinder to French and his fellow Calvinist scolds (no really, French has used John Calvin as his Twitter avatar – no pretension there!) by Chris Buskirk.  It’s very much worth a read, but Buskirk misses the essential basis for French’s argument, which is that actual results are immaterial, what is important is the purity of one’s beliefs.

This is the mirror image of the left’s obsession with virtue-signaling.  For example, the left doesn’t care if gun control works, it is a moral imperative – or as they like to say: “Who we are.”

The same goes for open borders, tolerating violence (and excrement) on the street, and dozens of other policies that harm the people they are supposed to save.

Again, this has long been known, but it’s not until now that I realized why the Quisling Never Trumpers are equally indifferent to the suffering of the people they are supposed to be helping.  This is why Kevin Williamson’s infamous response to rural decline was to tell people to learn to code, or give up their good-paying manufacturing or mining job to be a greeter at Wal Mart.

Williamson’s callousness is essential to his moral conception of himself because virtue-signaling is all that matters.  Just like Hillary, the Never Trumpers regard the working classes as “deplorable,” whose individual well-being is less important than their salvation through suffering.

Another similarity between the FredoCons and their erstwhile enemies is their use of identity politics. 

Just as a progressive has to list all their qualifiers (gay, trans, ethnic, sexual) before speaking, David French likes to remind everyone that he’s an “Iraq War veteran” and that one of his three children was adopted.

Frankly, I think it’s pretty low to run around bragging about an adopted child as if it’s a trophy or resume item.  I’ve also noted many times that French was no Audie Murphy – he served as a lawyer, not an actual soldier.  (Indeed, JAG officers don’t even have to go through basic training.)

Now a cynic might also note that like his progressive counterparts, French figures he personally will never suffer hardship for his policies.  That’s for the impure.

One might further note that someone is paying French and his co-religionists a lot of money to hector their erstwhile allies.  Again, like progressivism it is a grift, but one that makes the recipients feel good about themselves.

Certainly Jonah Goldberg has been banging this drum for three years, demanding that people name Trump’s virtues and then ignoring the answers.  There’s a point where this repetition crosses the line from willfully obtuse to simply cashing a paycheck for hectoring religious people.

Perhaps the biggest indictment I can levy against these would-be pharisees is the fact that for all their moral sermonizing, they’re not only comfortable with putting far worse sinners in charge, but have zero problem spreading lies and slanders of their own in pursuit of the cause.

None of these people hesitated at all to spread the obviously fake dossier and they spent years passing taking hits from the same RUSSIA conspiracy bong that the Democrats were hitting so heavily.

The Rule of Law returns to Massachusetts

It's fascinating to see how our political parties are returning to their historical roots.

Trump's GOP is once again in favor of raising the wages of American workers and protecting American industry.  This goes back to the foundation of the party.  When Quisling Never Trumpers whine about Trump being unprecedented, they're lying.  What was unprecedented was the GOP deciding to support endless immigration and de-industrialization.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are once again embracing nullification as a response to federal laws they don't like.  The most egregious case is the Massachusetts state judge who actually smuggled a federal fugitive out of her court room to avoid his arrest by a waiting federal agent.

Naturally, the usual suspects (ACLU, other state officials) are outraged that a JUDGE is being held accountable for violating federal law.  What is the world coming to!  Judges are supposed to be part of the aristocracy and therefore immune from legal consequences for their actions.

This article has a link to the indictment, which spells out just how duplicitous the judge and her court officers were.  They even went to the extreme of shutting off the court recording camera so they could hatch their criminal conspiracy in privacy.

I've seen some deluded souls argue that helping a repeat offender escape is somehow like helping Anne Frank escape the Nazis.

Uh, no.

In the first case, they guy had already been deported twice.  For the analogy to hold, the Frank family would have had to repeatedly invade Nazi-occupied territory - the exact opposite of what is happening here.

The modern left has convinced itself that the purity of their intentions should shield them from any negative consequences of their actions.

Not only is this morally abhorrent, in practice it will destroy civilization because it breaks the crucial link between cause and effect.

Happily, there are still a few adults who understand this.  Strange that for all the venom directed at Trump, he's the most adult person in Washington.

Benedict speaks and Notre Dame burns

Over the weekend, word came out that Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI had prepared a 6,000 word essay examining the moral basis for the Catholic Church's sex scandals.

Benedict resigned from the papacy in 2013 and hitherto had remained silent, but the recent revelations - and Pope Francis' bumbling efforts to respond - clearly touched his conscience.

Yesterday we all watched in horror as Notre Dame cathedral in Paris caught fire and burned with incredible ferocity.  While damage assessments are still in progress, it appears that the overall structure remains sound and that most - if not all - of its priceless relics and artifacts survived.

That both of these events would coincide with Holy Week would seem to be no accident.  The crisis within the Church is in many ways analogous to a fire started through carelessness that eventually consumes the structure under repair.

Fire can destroy, but it can also warm and inspire.  Benedict clearly believes that the Church will go on, and this this will be yet another example of how the Church has gone from prosperity to complacency, to decadence and crisis - and then into a period of renewal.

Similarly, it's possible that the danger presented to Notre Dame will help spur the French people and Christians across Europe to reconsider the danger to their illustrious heritage.  Are people really willing to see all that they have known, all that was given to them, wiped out in a consuming fire?  

Much of the talk in France centers on the cathedral's historical and artistic merit, but perhaps people will also consider the faith that went into building it - and can be renewed within it once more.

Traditionalists in the United Methodist Church hold firm

This story is a couple of weeks old, but bears further examination.

For the first time, the traditionalists in a mainline Protestant denomination have forced a halt to the watering down of their theology and a total embrace of political correctness.

The Atlantic describing this as "conservatives taking back the church," which appears to be yet another variation on the old "conservatives pounce!" but in fact all that happened is that the majority of delegates refused to cave in to their liberal win.

It wasn't a counterattack, just a spirited defense, but that now counts as aggression.

The article notes that a schism is still likely, but instead of traditionalists pulling out, it will likely be the progressives who leave.  They are so invested in their theology of sexual license that there can be no compromise.

A decisive factor in the vote was the unwillingness of traditional congregations outside the US to embrace dressing up Western decadence and depravity as Christian virtue.  Like many churches, the United Methodists have been sending missionaries around the world for a long time.  Those missions have born fruit and while the American core is falling into heresy, the periphery remains true to their doctrine.

A similar dynamic is at work in the Anglican communion.  The Church of England has gone all-in on progressivism, even coming up with liturgies to feed the delusions of the mentally ill.  The other provinces, however, are not willing to accommodate this and other depravities.  A split there seems inevitable.

The core problem is that progressivism makes for a lousy religion.  It is constantly evolving and changing based on political need and cultural impulse.  The compulsion to signal virtue by coming up with ever-newer fads is anathema to maintaining a timeless and eternal way of describing the universe.

Churches are supposed to provide rules for a lifetime - and beyond.  Progressivism can't even go a decade without repudiating core beliefs in favor of newer ones that are ever more "woke."

As I said, this isn't a counterattack so much as a desperate defense that succeeded after years of assault.  The next challenge will be to see how the UMC enforces its doctrine.  To this point, it hasn't, which is why there are a number of homosexual clergy who are quite happy to perform unauthorized ceremonies - and to do this with impunity.

The Methodists have halted the flooding on their ship.  What now remains to be seen is whether they can pump out all the water that's already aboard.

Some transgender thought experiments

One of the Hated Instapundit's co-bloggers had a link to a formerly transgender military veteran who has decided to embrace his body as it is and this got me thinking:

What if Big Pharma developed a revolutionary new drug to treat individuals suffering from mental illness?

It's being touted as a miraculous breakthrough that will cure some of the most difficult cases. 

However, it does have some considerable side effects.

For one thing, a single dose renders the patient sterile.  The sterility is irreversible, so once you start the treatment, you can never have children. 

Another issue is the high doses that need to be administered during the first two years of treatment.  The drug is so potent at these levels that patients need to be hospitalized before taking it.  Heavy bleeding, tissue infections and debilitating pain are common during this period.  Even after these symptoms go away (and they have presented in 100 percent of the cases to date), the patient will be dependent on low doses of the drug for life.

Most alarmingly, people who complete the first intense cycle of treatment have a greatly elevated likelihood of death.  After that, the long-term health effects aren't known.  Surviving patients claim to be happier, but others are deeply unhappy and regret ever beginning the treatment.  How many feel that way isn't known, likely because Big Pharma is threatening them with lawsuits.

Here's another thought experiment:

Let us say that in the run-up to 2020, Donald Trump goes all-in on cracking down on crime by illegal immigrants.  He get so carried away that he issues an executive order requiring that any non-citizen sex offenders that come into ICE's custody will have their genitalia physically cut off before they are released.

To even write that is to laugh at it.  It's utterly absurd and not only would ICE agents refuse to obey it, the courts would immediately strike it down as being cruel and unusual punishment.

I think you can see where I'm going with this.

A century ago, people who believed themselves to be the brightest and most compassionate minds in the country decided that forced sterilization of "undesirables" was a moral imperative, and they set about their work with gusto.  We now look back on horror at eugenics, but it was once a highly-respected field.

There is no doubt in my mind that people will look back on the mutilation of these helpless mentally ill people the same way.  They needed healing and in the name of compassion they were cut apart.

 

The Inquisition moves to defrock ex-Cardinal McCarrick

Despite statements overflowing with child-like ignorance, Pope Francis is in fact a very canny operator. 

Nowhere is the more apparent in the high-stakes game he is playing to cover up his own involvement with the pederasty priests. 

Let us recall his order to prevent the US bishops from developing a stringent code of conduct, or how he "rehabilitated" Cardinal Theodore McCarrick without any actual rehabilitation happening.

Indeed, without the courage of Archbishop Carlo Vigano, little if any of this would have come to light.  Pope Francis was in standard damage control mode after the devastating revelations and he has sought to downplay everything to do with it, even writing a flowery letter to McCarrick completely out of character with the man's crimes.

But the wheels of justice are turning.  McCarrick has lost his red hat and now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is recommending he be expelled from the clergy all together.   Defrocking McCarrick is a minor step, but the most the modern Church can do.  Civil authorities will now have to take action.  The man is old and reportedly banished to a Kansas monastery, but he needs to see the inside of a prison cell, as do all of his twisted partners in crime.

Strong Church inquiries also need to be made regarding the conduct of the bishops of Kentucky and their reaction to the Convington Kids hoax.  Bishops are supposed to be shepherds and protect their flocks, yet these men joined the wolves who attacked their sheep.  Some have already fulsomely apologized, but a stronger stance has to be made. 

Bishop of Lexington John Stowe in particular deserves careful scrutiny.  It is an undeniable fact that the vast majority of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church targeted boys and male teenagers.  Stowe has been very loud and conspicuous in his outreach to the gay community.  Did he use this highly publicized compassion to exploit vulnerable members of his diocese? 

Some will no doubt raise the cry of "homophobia," but that is in fact what allowed this disgusting abuse to go on for so long.  Under the rubric of "openness" and "compassion" countless children were molested and assaulted right under the very noses of their parents and community.  Just as the rape gangs in England use cries of "racism" to shield their predatory behavior, it's clear crooked priests and bishops did the same by waving a rainbow flag.

Of course a full accounting won't take place until Francis is gone, but people of goodwill within the Church must set the table so that the next pope's job is that much easier.

A most consequential State of the Union

I've studiously avoided the empty pomp and ceremony of the State of the Union address for some years, but last night I made an exception.

It was a remarkable performance, arguably the best of my adult lifetime.

This was because unlike previous presidents, Donald Trump is playing for keeps.  After weeks of siege warfare, this was his chance to break out into the open field.  He embraced it with gusto.

It was a long speech, and necessarily had its sluggish parts, but it also had moments that cannot easily be forgotten, such as a joint session of Congress singing "Happy Birthday" to a Holocaust survivor.

Or Trump's pointed and necessary calling out of the Democrats for supporting the murder of infants.

Yes, border security was a major theme, but who could watch Trump win over the White Robe Caucus without laughing hysterically?  They defiantly refused to applaud for every worthy cause Trump offered up to them, including a child cancer survivor, but when he talked about female employment rising, they couldn't restrain themselves. 

The master then chided his students for their failure before giving them new cause to cheer.  As they sat down, the master showman teased them that they should remain standing for what came next, which was his tribute to Womens' Suffrage and suddenly it was The White Resistance that was dancing and shouting "U-S-A!"

Democrat Feminist Status:  Owned.

Naturally, the eunuch wing of the GOP was outraged by this vulgar display and they've been pissing about it loudly on Twitter, which perfectly symbolizes their both their hatred of any kind of GOP success as well as their irrelevance.

Ironically, Trump's triumph is getting eclipsed by the Democrat meltdown in Virginia.  It is worth pointing out yet again that the KKK was always nothing more than the militant arm of the Democrat party.  The notion that it suddenly became a GOP front organization in 1965 was always low-grade bullshit.

It's utterly unsurprising that ancestral southern Democrats would use blackface and Klan hoods as punch lines in their youth, and it never made sense that Republicans would have anything to do with these hateful symbols since one of the Klan's pastimes was lynching Republicans.

The "Solid South" was solid because dissenters could easily find themselves on the short end of a long rope.

The sexual assault charges against Lt. Gov. Fairfax are also escalating in intensity, and this in turn makes me wonder: will he be the first thrown under the bus? 

And will the black community passively watch Southern White Democrats once again throw a black man aside without due process to save their miserable hides? 

We'll find out soon enough.

New York: Our abortion laws are as close to murder as you can get; Virginia: Hold my beer

One of the features of social media that render it so toxic is the need to showcase one's virtue with ever greater levels of righteous indignation.

Thus: it wasn't enough that some high school boys might have acted poorly.  No, they my be expelled, their parents reduced to poverty and they themselves soundly beaten!  Firebomb the school, too!

All this for a lie that fell apart within 48 hours.

In the case of abortion, Democrats seem driven to ever-greater extremes.  Virginia is considering legislation that define "abortion" as being what happens when a kid is starting to be born, and maybe after.

The Quisling Never Trump-endorsed Democrat governor, Ralph Northam, tried to explain away this horrific notion by mentioning that if a child is born prematurely, the mother and doctor could then discuss whether or not to let it live.  At least that's what it sounded like he said.

The problem of course with late, late-term abortion is that it isn't really "abortion" any more.  It's murder. 

The whole judicial construct of abortion was built on a foundation of lies wrapped around the notion of "viability."  That is to say, as long as the child was entirely dependent on the mother for life, she could legally kill it without consequence.

But late-term abortions turn this concept on its head.  The womb is now a place of supreme danger for the unborn infant, and according to the Solons of New York and some in Virginia, there's nothing wrong with carrying a perfectly healthy child almost to term, feeling it kick and move and respond to sounds and movement - and then killing it.

Words fail to express the utter depravity at work here.  One can point out that using a similarly grisly procedure on cats or dogs would almost certainly result in a prison term for animal cruelty.

But to Planned Parenthood, it's just expanding their core business and seeking new organ-harvesting opportunities.

Ah, was it only a few weeks ago that I was fondly recalling when Democrats said they wanted abortion "safe, legal and rare?" 

Once you move into "up to the moment of birth" territory, you've already crossed the line into infanticide, because the few seconds that separate the two are so easily bridged with a scalpel.

A tale of two bishops

The orchestrated smear of the Covington kids has revealed something of a fault line within the Catholic Church, and while it isn't flattering, it is necessary to know.

In the immediate aftermath of the information operation being launched, the Diocese of Covington produced a message highly critical of the school kids, clearly buying into the media-driven false narrative.

This was deeply disappointing from the Christian perspective.  It showed not just a lack of compassion for their own high school students, but also a failure to fully explore the facts.  Put simply, student discipline should never be meted out without first discussing it with the alleged offenders and their parents.  Doing it over a web page was particularly egregious.

To his credit, Bishop Roger Joseph Foys subsequently retracted that statement and has since apologized to the students and their parents. Crucially, the new letter does not try to sweep away the diocese's failure:

We should not have allowed ourselves to be bullied and pressured into making a statement prematurely, and we take full responsibility for it.  I especially apologize to Nicholas Sandmann and his family as well as to all CovCath families who have felt abandoned during this ordeal.  Nicholas unfortunately has become the face of these allegations based on video clips. This is not fair. It is not just.

Well put.  The would-be morality police at National Review might want to take note.  This is how one admits fault and seeks and apology.

Everyone can make a mistake, but the key element is owning up to it and trying to make it right.

Sadly, not all Catholic bishops seem capable of this.

Bishop John Stowe of the neighboring Diocese of Lexington, took this as the perfect opportunity to signal his virtue.  It appeared in the Lexington Herald Leader, complete with video of him washing the feet of a poor black man because he really wants you to see his virtue.  It contained this stunning passage:

Without engaging the discussion about the context of the viral video or placing the blame entirely on these adolescents, it astonishes me that any students participating in a pro-life activity on behalf of their school and their Catholic faith could be wearing apparel sporting the slogans of a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants, refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life-threatening policies. [Emphasis added]

Note that first sentence.  What he's basically doing is saying the whole point of the controversy is irrelevant.  No, the real issue is that Catholics visibly and publicly support Donald Trump.

I should note that the Diocese of Lexington includes southeast Kentucky, which is to say: Coal Country.  This is the part of the nation most impacted by Obama's anti-energy policies and crippled by the loss of blue-collar jobs.  As a result, the people there are staunchly pro-Trump.

Which, according to my reading of Bishop Stowe, means they are not welcome in the Catholic Church.

This is of course a remarkable statement, given that one of the tasks of his diocese is to spread the Catholic faith into Appalachia.  But don't take my word for it:

Thus, the Diocese of Lexington is designated as a mission diocese within the United States: the geographic, demographic and economic characteristics indicate an acute need to evangelize Gospel values and to provide outreach services elevating human dignity and eliminating human suffering.

It seems to this humble layman that Bishop Stowe is undercutting his own mission in a major way.  This highly public criticism will in fact convince a great many people who were already skeptical of Catholicism that it doesn't want them.

This tendency to set up political conditions for religious salvation is typically a tool of the left, and it's distressing to see a Catholic bishop doing it.  (Sadly, it isn't surprising.)

The initial response of both men has been disappointing, but I'm heartened to see Bishop Foys recognize his mistake and correct it. 

Bishop Stowe's error is both more egregious and therefore less amendable to a solution.

Jonah Goldberg: the voice of erudite, scrupulously moral, porn fantasies

I stopped reading Jonah Goldberg years ago, but I had no idea just how far the guy had degenerated.

Writing about Roger's Stone's made-for-TV process crime arrest, Goldberg went as low as he feasibly could:

Stone often wooed the ladies by noting that, thanks to his tat, “you’ll never meet another man with a d*** in the front and a d*** in the back,” another bon mot that might become both literal and figurative — if not quite literary — should he be incarcerated.

What this has to do with the crime he's accused of is besides the point.  Goldberg is supposedly a Thought Leader and Deep Thinker at a highly-respected magazine.

Which is why he makes dick jokes.

The column goes on with the usual "Must be something there if Mueller keeps digging," which after two years seems a bit jaded.  I mean the FBI had Trump under total surveillance for more than a year and they've produced zilch.

But that's another issue.  What we have here is a guy who wants the respect and dignity of National Review while reserving the right to go as low as he wants.

National Review has yet to own up to its full-throated and enthusiastic role in the Twitter lynch mob directed at innocent Catholic high school students.  They published a couple of pieces that regretted their "tone" and basically said "things were done, people misbehaved.  Now let us tell you about our upcoming cruise..."

Goldberg works for an elite institution that is no longer elite.  You see, to retain that elite reputation one must work very hard to sustain it.  Constantly getting the Big Picture wrong and falling for transparently obvious hoaxes wrecks one's credibility.

Reputations being what they are, only a few bad moves can leave it in tatters, requiring years of perfect behavior to repair.

The National Review crowd seems not to understand this.

If you want to be a voice that discusses serious issues, you have to actually be a voice discussing serious issues.  Roger Stone's personal behavior could have been alluded to in a single sentence rather than a multi-paragraph graphic recitation which coincidentally has nothing to do with the charges he was facing.

No, Goldberg brought it up first and foremost to take virtue-signalling swipes at Trump ("see, he associates with people I consider morally inferior") and to go for the cheap gags.

By the way, does Goldberg not know that prison rape is a national scandal and a human rights outrage?  Is it the official position of National Review that it's an appr0priate punch line in certain cases?

Something is either a moral outrage or it isn't.  Either you believe forcible rape is a hideous crime or you don't, and even toying with the notion that it may be good for some people you don't like abdicates any claim to moral authority and consistent principles.

I think a lot of the crew at National Review want to have it both ways - they want to be Jon Stewart doing his "clown-nose on, clown-nose off" routine where they can be Super Serious and also Just Kidding, often in the same item.

The problem is that Stewart was on Comedy Central, not writing for a venerable policy magazine. 

The next time National Review climbs on its soapbox and starts with its holier-than-thou morality lecture, this article will be proof that they're nothing more than hypocrites.

I guess I should give Goldberg some credit - this is the first time I visited the site in years.  But as the mass layoffs at Buzzfeed and elsewhere demonstrated yesterday, lots of clicks doesn't mean much these days.